St Blazey

St Blazey is the bit of Cornwall the postcard photographers drive straight through on their way to somewhere with a harbour view, which is a shame, because it is also the bit where people actually live. The valley below the town was a working estuary until the mines silted it up, which tells you everything about the local relationship between industry and scenery: industry won, then left. The Eden Project sits in an old clay pit up the road pulling in a million visitors a year, none of whom stop here, and the town has the settled air of a place that has made peace with that.